215-16.
On the first day of May, 1769, Boone and Findlay, accompanied by John Stewart and three other venturesome spirits, Joseph Holden, James Mooney, and William Cooley, took horse for the fabled land.

Passing through the Cumberland Gap, they built their first camp in Kentucky on the Red Lick fork of Station Camp Creek.
This camp was their base of operations.

From it, usually in couples, we infer, the explorers branched out to hunt and to take their observations of the country.

Here also they prepared the deer and buffalo meat for the winter, dried or smoked the geese they shot in superabundance, made the tallow and oil needed to keep their weapons in trim, their leather soft, and their kits waterproof.

Their first ill luck befell them in December when Boone and Stewart were captured by a band of Shawanoes who were returning from their autumn hunt on Green River.